Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
On Grognardism...
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 8246430" data-attributes="member: 7006"><p>Back in the mid-80s (I believe), the game show <em>Wheel of Fortune</em> added a final game to the program that the winner of the day got to participate in. There was a short puzzle put up on the board that the winner had to solve, and they were allowed to select 5 consonants and 1 vowel with which to do it.</p><p></p><p>For the first several years all was good. People would select all manner of letters and oftentimes any of the five vowels (although not usually U). And the final puzzle worked-- it was a lot of fun to play and watch. But then... as players began to see how the game worked and then started to "game" the game... astute players realized what was happening and began to look up the standard "letter appearance" tables for English words... and discovered that the most frequent letters used were R, S, T, L, N, and E. And thus... for quite a while, those became the letters that got selected by the really smart players most of the time (with occasionally someone going off-script and substituting a C or a D instead of like L for example). But eventually... everyone else also began realizing this, and soon every player began selecting these same exact six letters each and every game.</p><p></p><p>Years go on and the producers of the game realized that their final puzzle had issues and it became more boring to watch because everyone was making the same intelligent selections. So they changed the game up. They straight out gave the players the R, S, T, L, N, and E, and then asked them to select three <em>other</em> consonants and a vowel (just to give the game more variance.) And after a while, it seemed to work okay... but like each time before, a set of "best practices" came into play and thus the game once more lost any sense of originality or surprise. ALL players had seen this game for so long that they knew all the basic stuff that had to be done to win. At that point producers had nothing left but to intentionally start selecting puzzle solutions that barely used like ANY of the most popular twelve letters in the alphabet, and coming up with all these weird puzzle categories just to be able to throw words up on the board in random formats in any attempt to make something seem surprising or difficult for the players.</p><p></p><p>But watching the game now... seeing how far off the reservation producers of <em>Wheel of Fortune</em> have had to go just to produce any semblance of a useful or "interesting" final puzzle game... makes me just shake my head and think "This is ridiculous. I don't see how anyone could actually enjoy watching or playing this. Or at least I know I can't. This is essentially a "solved" game at this point-- player experience have rendered the base game practically moot. And if you now have to change things so dramatically in order to create ANY sense of surprise anymore... at some point I just have to ask whether or not it's worth it? Maybe it's just time to move on from this and come up with a different type of game."</p><p></p><p>This is how I feel about Basic and AD&D dungeon-crawling.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 8246430, member: 7006"] Back in the mid-80s (I believe), the game show [I]Wheel of Fortune[/I] added a final game to the program that the winner of the day got to participate in. There was a short puzzle put up on the board that the winner had to solve, and they were allowed to select 5 consonants and 1 vowel with which to do it. For the first several years all was good. People would select all manner of letters and oftentimes any of the five vowels (although not usually U). And the final puzzle worked-- it was a lot of fun to play and watch. But then... as players began to see how the game worked and then started to "game" the game... astute players realized what was happening and began to look up the standard "letter appearance" tables for English words... and discovered that the most frequent letters used were R, S, T, L, N, and E. And thus... for quite a while, those became the letters that got selected by the really smart players most of the time (with occasionally someone going off-script and substituting a C or a D instead of like L for example). But eventually... everyone else also began realizing this, and soon every player began selecting these same exact six letters each and every game. Years go on and the producers of the game realized that their final puzzle had issues and it became more boring to watch because everyone was making the same intelligent selections. So they changed the game up. They straight out gave the players the R, S, T, L, N, and E, and then asked them to select three [I]other[/I] consonants and a vowel (just to give the game more variance.) And after a while, it seemed to work okay... but like each time before, a set of "best practices" came into play and thus the game once more lost any sense of originality or surprise. ALL players had seen this game for so long that they knew all the basic stuff that had to be done to win. At that point producers had nothing left but to intentionally start selecting puzzle solutions that barely used like ANY of the most popular twelve letters in the alphabet, and coming up with all these weird puzzle categories just to be able to throw words up on the board in random formats in any attempt to make something seem surprising or difficult for the players. But watching the game now... seeing how far off the reservation producers of [I]Wheel of Fortune[/I] have had to go just to produce any semblance of a useful or "interesting" final puzzle game... makes me just shake my head and think "This is ridiculous. I don't see how anyone could actually enjoy watching or playing this. Or at least I know I can't. This is essentially a "solved" game at this point-- player experience have rendered the base game practically moot. And if you now have to change things so dramatically in order to create ANY sense of surprise anymore... at some point I just have to ask whether or not it's worth it? Maybe it's just time to move on from this and come up with a different type of game." This is how I feel about Basic and AD&D dungeon-crawling. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
On Grognardism...
Top